What Can We Do? A Hierarchy of 20 Things to Resist Fascism (Part 1 of 3)

A hier­ar­chy of 20 polit­i­cal activism actions you can take, each built on the foun­da­tion of those before, rough­ly in the order of their impor­tance.

A lot of folks on the left side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum have the same con­cerns late­ly: what do we do about fas­cism, the destruc­tion of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, the oblit­er­a­tion of our social safe­ty nets, and the under­min­ing of our diplo­mat­ic standing on the inter­na­tion­al stage. The pow­er wield­ed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly wors­en our lives is con­cen­trat­ed into the hands of couch fuck­ers, the gold-toi­let “man of the peo­ple,” and actu­al­ly lit­er­al not-hyper­bol­ic Nazis who think chain­saws are a real­ly good metaphor for gov­ern­ment over­sight.

But this moment is so much big­ger than any one of us. It seems over­whelm­ing to be a mere cit­i­zen in the mid­dle of all this, and the pow­er that is com­ing down on us is lit­er­al­ly designed to make us feel hope­less and trounce our reac­tion time. The oppo­si­tion par­ty has no nation­al pow­er and, if it mis­be­haves, it gets a strange sort of cul­tur­al spank­ing that those on the right nev­er seem to. States can get steam­rolled (which is iron­ic, giv­en how much bull­shit the GOP has hid­den behind fed­er­al­ism in the past). Repub­li­cans are ignor­ing the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers and try­ing to com­plete­ly defy the courts. Mean­while, peo­ple the world over are watch­ing in hor­ror as threats of annex­ing Cana­da and going to war with the EU over Green­land become breath­tak­ing­ly plau­si­ble. All while geno­cide grinds on, and due process is ignored when it comes to brown peo­ple.

What are we sup­posed to do? We’re cit­i­zens, not politi­cians. Peo­ple with guns are show­ing up and telling us we have to do what they say. We’re not MCU super­heroes with son­ic eye beams and flam­ing pee. We’re not gov­ern­ment offi­cials. We didn’t vote for this. Most of us on the left vot­ed AGAINST this (as opposed to FOR any­thing). We don’t have the pow­er to stop it at this point, and the peo­ple who are com­plic­it have their heads so far up their ass­es they can taste their own fill­ings, so how much would it even mat­ter if we had some sort of check or bal­ance? The judi­cial branch seems like bare­ly a speed bump to their open­ly, explic­it­ly fas­cist agen­da. In the leg­is­la­ture, the par­ty in pow­er is enabling every­thing that’s happening—including their own loss of pow­er. Con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers that were fun­da­men­tal­ly sep­a­rat­ed (“checks and bal­ances” if you’re in high school civics) are being con­sol­i­dat­ed and con­cen­trat­ed into a sin­gle auto­crat­ic hand faster than enraged op-eds can be writ­ten, protests orga­nized, and Democ­rats can tut. Rule of law means noth­ing. Dogs and cats liv­ing together. The fal­con can­not hear the fal­con­er. What even is our recourse? We hear slo­gans like “become ungovern­able,” or “resist,” but what does that MEAN?

The Inter­net is teem­ing with (often great) advice, but it’s all blobbed togeth­er. You get advice like “don’t com­ply in advance” in the same lis­ti­cle as “learn grit­ty sur­vival skills involv­ing bowie knives, move to the woods, live deep in the for­est of nation­al parks while sur­viv­ing on berries and hand-killed griz­zly bear meat, and call your­selves the Wolver­ines.” It’s all good advice, but it’s a lit­tle… unpri­or­i­tized.

So what I want to try to do is give you all some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than the usu­al fare of five or six ideas—a pyra­mid. Each step builds on the foun­da­tions of the pre­ced­ing ones. You go as high up the pyra­mid as you can rea­son­ably go before your health (men­tal or phys­i­cal) is endan­gered. Maybe you can only han­dle the first one. Or maybe you’ve achieved the first five, but the next cou­ple sound like more than you can han­dle. Maybe work­ing qui­et­ly with­in the sys­tem sounds doable, but step­ping out­side the sys­tem is just too scary… or too risky since you’re a sin­gle par­ent. Or too cost­ly if you work two jobs to make ends meet. Or what­ev­er. Maybe you go to the end…into the very fires of Mor­dor.

Do your best.

Now you might quib­ble over the exact posi­tion of a few of these, and some can be done despite missing/skipping a few that came before (though not many), but each essen­tial­ly gets hard­er than the last and depends on the sup­port of the ones before it to be suc­cess­ful.

This list is not for sea­soned vets. It’s not for peo­ple who have makeshift rub­ber bul­let shields in their garage. It’s not for Black Bloc. It’s not for BIPOC who have been orga­niz­ing protest march­es against this shit since they were thir­teen. This is for peo­ple who are, for the first time, ask­ing what they can do. This is what they can do.

1. Survive (prepare and plan)

[Note: I refuse to blame any­one for their own death, whether by sui­cide, extra­ju­di­cial mili­tia, or a self-care three­some that blew an aneurysm because it was so amaze­balls. A death at the end of a strug­gle with a men­tal health cri­sis isn’t real­ly dif­fer­ent from a death at the end of a strug­gle with can­cer. Death by sui­cide brought about by a regime deter­mined to strip all human­i­ty from trans folks is just as much the fault of that oppres­sive regime as if they pulled the trig­ger them­selves.]

1a. Part One of sur­vival: Stay alive

They want you dead.

Their absolute­ly best-case sce­nario is that you just roll over and die. That you don’t even make them do the work of hid­ing the body from human­i­tar­i­an inves­ti­ga­tion groups.

So keep going. If it takes the defi­ance of not giv­ing a bunch of big­ots the fuck­ing sat­is­fac­tion, make them work for it. Make it cost them. Run if you have to. Hide if you have to. Leave the coun­try if you have to. Stay alive.

But hear me when I say this: the world is bet­ter with you in it. So if defi­ance isn’t a good enough rea­son to keep kick­ing, do it because you mat­ter and you are impor­tant and if we lose you, we are ALL dimin­ished.

Pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing this time. Talk to peo­ple who love you. Take your meds. Stay hydrat­ed. Keep up with hygiene.

For some folks, this is as much as they can do. The pres­sure of try­ing to sur­vive takes max­i­mum effort. We all have to step up, but we all also have to know our lim­its. For inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty mar­gin­al­ized folks, expect­ing big con­tri­bu­tions to the rev­o­lu­tion is anoth­er form of the same big­otry. A per­son work­ing two jobs, try­ing to find a line on con­tra­band HRT, bare­ly hold­ing them­selves together, liv­ing in a world where big­otry is open­ly on the rise, does not need your shit that they don’t have a free Sat­ur­day to pour sug­ar into gas tanks. A sin­gle mom with three kids and two jobs might not have the time to take on this fight. Men­tal and phys­i­cal health is and will be be impact­ed by this regime—some peo­ple are just bare­ly hang­ing on. You decide your own lev­el of involve­ment.

And you absolute­ly have my per­mis­sion to smack with a bell-hooks book any­one who tries to tell you that your thou­sand-yard stare at the TV watch­ing your ninth run of Sense8 “isn’t going to stop Nazis.” Espe­cial­ly if you’ve had a hard day. It will stop Nazis because it’s what you need to hang in there and you being alive…stops Nazis.

1b. Part Two of sur­vival: Plan to KEEP stay­ing alive

Not an idea of a plan. A PLAN!

At what point will you leave? What is the trig­ger? Is it the first demon­stra­tion where the Nation­al Guard opens fire on U.S. cit­i­zens? Is it the qui­et accep­tance of Repub­li­cans traf­fick­ing U.S. cit­i­zens into El Sal­vado­ri­an con­cen­tra­tion camps? Is it when every blog­ger and activist writer starts get­ting arrest­ed? Is it when trans peo­ple have to wear iden­ti­fy­ing mark­ings? Is it when polit­i­cal dis­si­dents go miss­ing by the dozens? When will you pack up the car and dri­ve?

Where will you go? Cana­da? Mex­i­co? What city exact­ly? Have a “go bag” ready. Get your paper­work in order. Do not let your car get below a half a tank of gas. MAKE A PLAN! Make sure some­one knows where you’re going to be so they know you’re miss­ing if you don’t show up. And also so they can meet you there if they stayed back to take care of some­thing while you just dri­ve, and they now need to go and meet you. Make it spe­cif­ic in case one of you los­es your cell phone. Not just “Cana­da.” Cana­da is a big place. It’s got lots of lakes. And more than one moose. Pick a spe­cif­ic moose. (Not “Cedric the moose” either—they like that name.) Find a city. Google it. Pick a restau­rant. Name a time you’ll be there every day. MAKE A PLAN!!!

Last­ly, a bor­ing, mun­dane corol­lary to this is that you have to sur­vive for the long haul. This won’t be over in a week. Not in a month, either. Prob­a­bly not in a year. And every bit of evi­dence says it might not be over in three and a half more years because auto­crats gonna… uh, auto­crat. You still have to do laun­dry and get the kids to soc­cer prac­tice. You still have to sur­vive cap­i­tal­ism. You still have to pay rent and eat veg­eta­bles, drink water, touch grass. Sur­vival means you take care of you. Which leads me to…

2. Thrive

They want you dead.

But they’ll take, absolute­ly take, “too mis­er­able to resist” as a close sec­ond.

Sur­vival is resis­tance (and the most fun­da­men­tal form of it). But also every act of plea­sure and joy is a sub­ver­sive slap in their face. It makes them apeshit that they can’t break you. One of the hall­marks of author­i­tar­i­an­ism is that it is not pre­pared for sus­tained resis­tance and the best way to keep resist­ing is by not allow­ing your­self to be ter­ror­ized. You do this by tak­ing care of your men­tal health through self-care.

Besides, if they see you hav­ing more fun than them, they become incensed and turn bright pur­ple. That’s why so many move­ments marched in the day and par­tied all night—the “fuck you” is baked deli­cious­ly into every slice of rad­i­cal self-care.

So take root-and-branch care of your­self. Have a din­ner par­ty. Dance all night. Fuck a friend. Fuck two friends—maybe at once! Watch a sun­set. Mois­tur­ize. Eat a scone with the emo­tion­al matu­ri­ty of West­ley in Buffy’s third sea­son. What­ev­er brings you joy, do it. Don’t give them the sat­is­fac­tion of tak­ing plea­sure away from you.

They hate you, so you have to love your­self twice as hard.

And if look­ing away makes you feel guilty, remind your­self that you are doing some­thing with every act of rad­i­cal self-love. Tak­ing a breath to recen­ter isn’t apa­thy unless you don’t ever come back. We all need moments of rev­el­ry (and maybe even a lit­tle debauch­ery… as a treat) to help us get up and keep strug­gling the next day.

Now some peo­ple (par­tic­u­lar­ly white peo­ple) are going to take this as licence not to take things seri­ous­ly, and go get a mani-pedi and binge every sea­son of Love Is Blind instead of give a shit. Yep, they got their stamp of approval, and now every­thing becomes “Hey, this totes counts, Judgy McJudgerson—self-care IS resistance, baby!” And, hon­est­ly, there’s not much you can do about that. It’s not like if they had­n’t read this lis­ti­cle, they were going to be hard­core, and I just blew the whole rev­o­lu­tion. They just want to be told it’s okay to do what they were going to do any­way so they can sleep a lit­tle bet­ter at night.

But for most peo­ple, it’s dif­fi­cult to empha­size enough just how much the cru­el­ty and mal­ice and hor­rors can GET to you. It’s a strug­gle just to keep from sink­ing into The Swamps of Sad­ness. The move­ment needs you mov­ing at a steady, marathon pace, not a burnout sprint, and that means titrat­ing some good times to keep you nour­ished in between bouts of strug­gle.

Besides, our par­ties are bet­ter any­way, because we’re not stuck-up reli­gious zealots who only ever fuck in mis­sion­ary posi­tion for pur­pos­es of pro­cre­ation, so let’s make them envi­ous as all hell.

3. Deepen your ties to community

[Note: Com­mu­ni­ty here can include online com­mu­ni­ty, though I’m going to be hon­est that in-per­son com­mu­ni­ty WILL be bet­ter at some of this.]

Com­mu­ni­ty is so so so very impor­tant in a time like this. One of the fas­cist goals is to erode the self-esteem of mar­gin­al­ized groups and indi­vid­u­als. They want “get­ting with the pro­gram” to be the only way for you to find accep­tance and belong­ing. Com­mu­ni­ty is the direct counter to such ero­sion. It is VERY hard to under­mine the self-esteem or sense of worth of some­one with a web of strong inter­per­son­al con­nec­tions.

We all need com­mu­ni­ty to have a sense that some good will endure no mat­ter what hap­pens. Com­mu­ni­ty gives us essen­tial social sup­port, par­tic­u­lar­ly against the sense of iso­la­tion and lone­li­ness that fas­cism wants you to feel with­out the state.

Our sense of resilience is absolute­ly depen­dent on com­mu­ni­ty. Com­mu­ni­ty gives us oppor­tu­ni­ties to teach and learn and to share dif­fer­ences of opin­ions from peo­ple we care about and trust instead of from a stranger yelling at us (usu­al­ly from the oth­er side of a com­put­er screen), as well as a group to join forces with for col­lec­tive action that can build real change.

Com­mu­ni­ty helps you keep your val­ues in check. It helps com­bat the nor­mal­iza­tion of fas­cism creep­ing into our lives. It helps us to be strong togeth­er in ways we can’t alone. One of fas­cis­m’s strongest weapons is its ter­ror, and a tight-knit group of peo­ple can help your men­tal health and keep you from being per­pet­u­al­ly in fear.

And, not to put too cliché a point on it, com­mu­ni­ty can look out for someone—possibly phys­i­cal­ly pro­tect­ing some­one who might be in trou­ble with the regime.

Prob­a­bly there aren’t ever enough good things to be said about com­mu­ni­ty.

Deep­en­ing com­mu­ni­ty roots might involve show­ing up to light-heart­ed social events like street par­ties, nature walks, or game nights; it can also even­tu­al­ly involve oppor­tu­ni­ties for more activist oppor­tu­ni­ties like ral­lies, vig­ils, march­es, and protests. You can find a church you trust. A local polit­i­cal group. Vol­un­teer­ing. Poor Peo­ple’s Cam­paign is a great place to start if you don’t know where else you might.

I would cau­tion you to be care­ful of your neigh­bors: maybe you’re wrong about what side they are on this. Choose your peo­ple deliberately—that’s your com­mu­ni­ty. Don’t con­fuse com­mu­ni­ty with neigh­bor­hood.

Be there FOR your com­mu­ni­ty, and you will ben­e­fit from that, not just in the halv­ing of shared sor­rows (and dou­bling of shared joys) but also —for most of us— in the sat­is­fac­tion of being a part of some­thing and serv­ing some­thing big­ger than our per­son­al prob­lems.

4. Stay engaged

As you move up the hier­ar­chy pyra­mid of resis­tance, it will be very impor­tant to know what is going on. Stay engaged.

Find a news source you trust and read it. Find inter­na­tion­al news if our media becomes tru­ly com­pro­mised. (It isn’t yet, but it’s not going to last long—the “Media Dies in Dark­ness” days are over.) Know what the regime is up to, and what they say they’re going to be doing. There are folks out there (who are no fans of Trump in any way) who do not know, as of the time of this writ­ing, that the Trump-appoint­ed direc­tor of the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices is build­ing a reg­istry of every­one with autism and propos­ing “well­ness farms” to send them.

What is the lat­est atroc­i­ty? What’s hap­pen­ing in the states? What is hap­pen­ing on the inter­na­tion­al scene? Are Democ­rats real­ly “doing noth­ing”? (Hint, they’re doing stuff—they just have no pow­er, so it’s court fil­ings, state resis­tance, and some grand­stand­ing.) How are protests going? What’s gain­ing trac­tion in the courts? Who has said what in the last few days? What is going on with tar­iffs? Cana­da? Green­land?

It’s impor­tant you have a sense of what is going on. How­ev­er, keep in mind that NOT con­sum­ing the media in a time like this can also lit­er­al­ly be self-care. So stay away if you’re not here in the pyra­mid yet, and no mat­ter where you are, move for­ward try­ing to thread the needle of know­ing what’s up vs. doom­scrolling.

5. Think crit­i­cal­ly. Fact check

Under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing and how it fits into the big­ger pic­ture. A lot of peo­ple sprang into motion bring­ing Project 2025 to life on the day of inau­gu­ra­tion, and the play­book is right there for how to under­mine democ­ra­cy and keep a con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty for­ev­er. You need to know that they’re like­ly going to declare a state of emer­gency and enact mar­tial law to “main­tain the peace.” (They have, at least, planned to do so.) You need to under­stand how white suprema­cy is dri­ving pol­i­cy.

But there are a lot of mov­ing parts and a few pla­cat­ed allies along the way. Every­one of those has a slight­ly dif­fer­ent agen­da. Most are racists. Many are arch­con­ser­v­a­tive. Some are klep­to­crats. Some are fun­da­men­tal­ist christo­fas­cists. Some are neo-Nazis. You should know what their endgame is and how each piece fits in their plan. Because the Nar­cis­sist in Chief might be a chaos ele­men­tal who will obey whomev­er is suck­ing his dick at the moment, but the peo­ple around him have knee pads, lob­ster bibs, real­ly shiny lip­stick, and a ter­ri­fy­ing agen­da.

Read a lot (more books and thought­ful arti­cles and fewer “hot takes” and memes). Check the source. Con­sid­er the audi­ence. Think crit­i­cal­ly.

Also be ready for bull­shit. It’s already com­ing from peo­ple try­ing to tell you you’re over­re­act­ing but also from peo­ple try­ing to get you wound up. It’s com­ing from com­mend­able motives of try­ing to get peo­ple to care, and per­fid­i­ous motives of try­ing to run false flags so that the truth is that much hard­er to find and trust. It’s com­ing from all around the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Keep sharp.

6. Document the truth

One of the first, eas­i­est, most fun­da­men­tal things you can do to resist with­out ever stick­ing your neck out is to doc­u­ment the truth. That is their first and most sus­tained attack—on the truth. There’s a rea­son they increas­ing­ly con­sid­er dis­pas­sion­ate accu­rate report­ing of sim­ple facts to be “dis­loy­al” and “sedi­tious,” and why jour­nal­ists have to take increas­ing pains to report any­thing at all.

Keep a copy of your social media posts offline. Write a jour­nal. Film your reac­tions. Keep records.

There’s going to be a lot of fas­cist attempts to rewrite the sto­ry. Not just the over­ar­ch­ing narrative—sometimes the very facts them­selves. You’ve already seen the Nar­cis­sist in Chief try­ing to do this. He will say he does­n’t real­ly know peo­ple he’s close with. He will tell you how his big, beau­ti­ful brain is the eighth won­der of the world, but then claim not to know any­thing about what’s hap­pen­ing. Fuck, this is a guy who will say, “I nev­er said that” when it was like a day ago on cam­era and they run the clip.

But some­thing hap­pens in the world of “alter­na­tive facts” and chang­ing nar­ra­tives and lying liars and sharpie hur­ri­cane land­fall pre­dic­tions and doc­tored MS-13 tat­too images. It’s some­thing fas­cist move­ments are very adept at. They lie SO FUCKING MUCH that the strug­gle to set the sto­ry straight about any one lie becomes mean­ing­less. Truth becomes impos­si­ble (which is the goal). Basi­cal­ly, this is a macro­cosm of an abu­sive per­son gaslight­ing you. It’s just hap­pen­ing on the soci­etal lev­el.

YOU ARE NOT GOING CRAZY! There’s a rea­son every­one who lived under or stud­ied a fas­cist regime (par­tic­u­lar­ly Hitler’s rise to pow­er) got real­ly loud all at once, and it’s not because they all mys­ti­cal­ly became over­wrought and melo­dra­mat­ic… all at once.

So keep­ing a record can help you stay ground­ed. It can remind you that you’re NOT crazy when you feel like the goal­posts are shift­ing. It can help you remem­ber exact­ly what you felt, when you go back to see what hap­pened on a day. It may remind you that a month ago, you found today’s every­day behav­ior absolute­ly uncon­scionable, and how far nor­mal­iza­tion has brought us all. It may even pos­si­bly be of use to his­to­ri­ans.

7. Give support/Deny support

If you are sur­viv­ing, thriv­ing with rad­i­cal self-care, know what’s going on, think about it and doc­u­ment what is true, but are not quite ready to step into the light of direct atten­tion, you can sup­port those who are doing what you want and deny­ing sup­port to those who aren’t.

“Sup­port” can come in a lot of dif­fer­ent forms. Obvi­ous­ly, you can sup­port cute, pur­ple-haired antifas­cist blog­gers with some cold cash dona­tions to help them sur­vive cap­i­tal­ism, but you can also offer some­one gen­er­ous words of affir­ma­tion, give them a shout-out, offer to donate a cou­ple of hours of busy­work, donate your own skills (one of the best gifts I ever got was some­one who could­n’t afford to be a patron but gave me a mas­sage every cou­ple of months), buy a gift, or if you’re in a posi­tion to do so, make them a meal or a dessert or some­thing. Remem­ber that they prob­a­bly need help remem­ber­ing to thrive, and that their abil­i­ty to car­ry on may hinge upon a few stolen moments of rad­i­cal self-care.

A lot of peo­ple who CAN march, protest, write, and gen­er­al­ly be loud and vis­i­ble could use logis­ti­cal and emo­tion­al sup­port as well. You don’t have to go to a protest or write a blog against fas­cism to help some­one who does. Help­ing them cov­er bills for missed work, financ­ing their protest, even offer­ing to help with child­care (because babies don’t belong at poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous protests) or trans­porta­tion (because a lot of nation­al protests take place at the near­est big city—which isn’t always close and walk­a­ble) can be amaz­ing­ly help­ful.

You can help from the shad­ows.

And on the flip side, you can deny sup­port to orga­ni­za­tions help­ing fas­cism. It does­n’t even have to be an offi­cial boy­cott (although it can be). Just avoid those who are okay with fas­cism, racism, and author­i­tar­i­an­ism as much as pos­si­ble. Have some time to go shop­ping? Do a brick-and-mor­tar and avoid Ama­zon. (Or use anoth­er com­pa­ny, even though they take longer to ship, if you are okay wait­ing for it a lit­tle longer.) Help put the squeeze on these places—it does­n’t take much for them to real­ize their fourth-quar­ter returns are tank­ing. Switch your search engine away from Google. Move your mon­ey out of Fideli­ty or Black­stone. Mega­cor­po­ra­tions aren’t always easy to work around, and doing so is almost always some form of priv­i­lege. So just do the best you can. The nice thing about eco­nom­ic activism is that they’re so focused on their prof­it mar­gins, they’ll feel the pinch almost imme­di­ate­ly, even from small changes.

Also, maybe you just take the time to find a board gam­ing group that does­n’t “hear every­one out.” Or find a church ser­vice that isn’t sham­ing queer peo­ple for being fed up with MAGA.

It would be nice to defeat the fas­cists in one swift stroke, but it’s much more like­ly that we might have to put the things we want to sup­port in the sun­light and the things we do not want to sup­port in the shade, and they slow­ly real­ize that the cost of doing busi­ness is going to be too high.

On to Part 2 (of 3)